The Long Sword(219)

            We dismounted and went forward at a trot. You can run in full harness, but we had been on shipboard for a week and we were not at the height of our conditioning. I hurt in a hundred places, and my breastplate rubbed the top of my hipbones because Marc-Antonio was wounded and John didn’t know what holes to use on the straps. My arms ached from fighting the day before and I had a wound that was fevered.

            I was in fine shape compared to some of the volunteers. Juan was pale under his dark skin and Nerio had circles under his eyes.

            Fiore burned with puissance. And so did Miles Stapleton: just knighted, he was ready to take the city on his own.

            We jogged forward.

            Seeing us, the Saracens launched a barrage of arrows and darts. Our Italians shot back, trying to angle their bolts into the slits in the towers. I can’t tell you whether they succeeded or not because my visor was closed and I was breathing the hot air of Egypt in my stifling faceplate.

            We had about four hundred paces to cross. Halfway there I saw the Scots coming in from the side – they’d been huddled under the wall with the archers and the sailors and they were angry at their wounds and their dead.

            I passed the king. In a storm, it is every man for himself, and I was lengthening my stride as I took hits. A heavy spear stuck in the sand in front of me.

            My breath came in gasps, and I hadn’t fought anyone.

            Nerio appeared at my shoulder and Miles began to pass me.

            I was hit again.

            And then I ran into the wall of heat. Even inside my visor, I could not breathe that air. It was appalling. I thought my eyes would burn and I was in armour. I tripped over a fallen beam and stumbled; my shoulder hit a wall and I bounced, shoulder burning. I caught myself left-handed and the stone burned the heavy deerskin off the palm of my hand.

            Sweet Christ, it was hell! The tunnel behind the burned door had caught fire – something had been stored there, perhaps. But the stone was hot, and part of the passage was still burning. It occurred to me that this was the stupidest thing I had ever done.

            I got past the fire. The heat had finally got through my heavy fighting shoes to my feet and then I was in the sun. There were men there, but only twenty or thirty. Not a hundred or a thousand.

            I’m not sure I actually thought anything, then.

            I had the Emperor’s longsword in my hand, and I used it.

            I suppose this is the moment to tell you of my epic duel with the Captain of the tower, my longsword against his spear – and oh, my friends, I’d love to tell you such a tale. But I remember little of it, and mostly they were unarmoured, desperate men. Let no man ever tell me they were cowards. Those men, Alexandrines and not Mamluks at all, hurled themselves at me the way we had thrown ourselves at de Charny.

            Why were there not more of them? Where were the armoured men? The engineers? The burning oil?

            I knew none of these things, and neither did the terrified men facing me.

            I know that I spared no one. I know that I used every weapon and every limb. My sword stabbed and cut, and I used my arms and legs, my elbows, my knees, the pointed steel tips of my sabatons.

            I would say that I was alone against them for an hour, save that Fiore has sworn to me that he was never more than three steps behind me in the tunnel.

            That’s how it is, sometimes.

            But then I knew when Fiore was next to me, because the pressure eased suddenly. Ever play with a child, and she sits on your chest? And then she rolls off … It was like that. And then there was even less pressure as Miles thrust forward, and then Nerio, and then Juan, and we were pushing forward, step after step.